Invasion of Hell, Part III: the Nightmare
by secooper87
Summary: The Daleks, and the First Evil. Neither can touch, neither has any mercy, both live only to destroy. Buffy faces that destruction. And her worst nightmare.


Author's Note: An extremely short story. More like a vignette, I think. Important to the overall story arc. Anyways, next, we'll get a short story about Faith and the Doctor. That one has more of a plot. Then... back to Seo, with a story involving lots of plot!

Enjoy!

* * *

Buffy couldn't save everyone.

It's what she learned, when she first became a Slayer. And what she told herself, every day, wandering through Hell.

She didn't know how long it had been since she'd first run into the Daleks. Or how many hell dimensions she'd been to, since. She'd lost count of days, weeks, months, even the number of worlds. There were too many to keep track of. Too many friends she'd made and then lost.

Sometimes, the Daleks came.

Sometimes, they didn't.

The Daleks flooded through hell dimensions at random, and Buffy figured she was probably lucky to stay ahead of their invasion. When she intersected with them, Buffy saved whoever she could.

Not many ever survived.

Sometimes, nobody did. And Buffy just ran to save herself.

"I faced down the First Evil," Buffy told one of the friends she met, on a hell world where the Daleks had struck and were devastating everything in sight. "I thought I'd never feel as much fear as I did back then. But… I was wrong."

The friend stared at her. Incredulous.

"But you said the First Evil was all powerful," he cried. "An omnipresent, nearly omniscient super-entity that was hunting down you and your friends, with no—!"

"The First Evil was more powerful," said Buffy. "But it couldn't kill directly. And it needed to follow the rules." Buffy shuddered, as she hid from the Daleks. "They don't follow rules. They just kill."

She wrote letters with trembling hands, on the subject.

Because whenever she wrote, Buffy could believe that Seo's survival was a certainty. She could convince herself that Seo was still out there. Still giving the universe hope.

Buffy had to believe.

_It's funny — the Daleks don't have hands_, Buffy wrote. _They can't touch. You'd think that a race who couldn't touch would be helpless. But the First couldn't touch, either. And the First still got people to work for it. It still destroyed the Watchers Council and nearly brought down the Slayers. It still inspired people to hate and fear and destruction._

_The Daleks do the same thing._

_There's no reasoning with them. No attacking them. Nothing you can do to stop them. And there's so much hate and malice in them!_

_Sometimes, facing them down, I think… maybe they're the same. The Daleks and the First. Maybe… the Daleks are the replacement the First found for Caleb and the Bringers._

_The Doctor always said they were the ultimate evil and hate in the universe._

_Maybe he was right._

Occasionally, Buffy gave her letters in a cluster to friends she made, along the way. Those who survived, and had escaped to safer places. Because she couldn't help but think that maybe — just maybe — these people would find a way out of here before she did. Or maybe even that Seo herself would come here looking for Buffy. And need to know what happened.

She left a trail of letters for Seo.

And kept running.

Kept winding up in one hell after another hell after another. Hell dimensions with demons and tortured people screaming were a relief — Buffy could do something about them, free the people and defeat the demons. There was hope!

Dimensions where the Daleks arrived… had no hope.

Truth was, the Daleks made normal hell look good.

Then, one day, Buffy arrived in a hell dimension worse than all the others. One where the Daleks had already been and gone. And left no one alive.

The Hell Buffy never forgot.

The one that lingered in her nightmares.

* * *

The sky was sickly, like the dying embers of a fire.

The ground red and dusty, bleak and strewn with blood. Buffy found herself in the midst of ruins, the obvious aftermath of a Dalek attack. Complete with bodies gnarled and dead, at her feet. And the air completely silent, around her.

The natives had clearly tried to fight back.

But Buffy found nobody left alive. The streets ran with blood, children lying dead alongside adults. Agony on each and every one of their faces.

Buffy had seen this many times before.

But this time was worse.

Because these people were human.

"They're like me," Buffy breathed. She thought about Carmen's hell dimension — the one the Doctor had saved in that whole Facksisil of Balime incident. Was this that dimension? Had these people been free, before the Daleks had invaded and murdered them all?

Buffy kept searching.

Needing to find a survivor. Anyone who'd made it.

Then she saw a face — one who looked like a teenager, maybe Seo's age. Blond hair. Dead brown eyes, staring into the distance. Lying lifeless on the ground, covered by the corpses of her comrades.

Buffy broke down.

What if she'd come home? What if this wasn't a Hell Dimension at all, but a real place, in her own universe, and this was her real daughter, and… and…?!

It wasn't Seo.

But Buffy couldn't stop the endless rush of worries, tumbling through her mind.

She needed to write a letter. Needed to reassure herself that Seo was alive, that this wasn't the real universe at all and Buffy could still get back home in time to save her. That Buffy could keep her daughter safe.

She grabbed up a bit of paper at random from one of the ruined houses and began to write, pouring out every last thought and doubt and fear onto the page.

She wrote until she couldn't stand it anymore.

And collapsed over the paper, sobbing passionately, tears dripping down — plop, plop — and smudging her words.

She never finished the letter.

Just tucked it away, and left that horrible place.

The closest Buffy had ever come to home. The hell that Buffy couldn't save.


End file.
